


The Night is Cold and Dark and Full of Love

by PennamePersona



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Motherly love, Nyx Loves Her Kids So Much, Spoilers, loosely inspired by shannastoryteller's Gods & Monsters, when your kids grow up and you're like i'm so proud of you and also i miss you, y'all if you haven't read that Please Go Do It It's Literally So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29314485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PennamePersona/pseuds/PennamePersona
Summary: Nyx expects that when all the meddling and Zagreus’s sheer force of will paid off, she will lose a son.She does not know what to do when she discovers she was wrong.
Relationships: Nyx & All Her Children, Nyx & Hypnos, Nyx & Thanatos (Hades Video Game), Nyx & Zagreus (Hades Video Game), minor background Nyx/Persephone
Comments: 10
Kudos: 96





	The Night is Cold and Dark and Full of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote all of this pretty quickly in one go and it's got lots of concepts i might revisit in the future but like i Had to get a fic for this game out there asap bc fuuuuuck i love it so much

Nyx expects that when all the meddling and Zagreus’s sheer force of will paid off, she will lose a son.

* * *

  
  


The Night is cold and empty and full of more than any mind, mortal or immortal, can comprehend.

(Save the originator of all, though Nyx tries to push aside all thoughts of Primordial Chaos as soon as they come.)

Her children have only one parent, as she did, for the Night needs no help to fill itself brimming with stars and moons and galaxies. Like her, they are important. They are necessary and they know this, as soon as they are born. 

Her first daughters step out beyond her robes as soon as their minds take hold. They know her, See her, and she knows they will not stay. They cannot, too drawn already to the twisting threads of existence. They give her one gift before they go, a conversation, an acknowledgement that they know what her love is. She did not have this with Chaos, and though the futures her daughters can See, of her enveloping them with love, keeping them safe from all harm, shall never come to pass...she is grateful her daughters are aware that they so easily could.

Time functions differently for beings such as Nyx, such as Chaos, such as the Fates, especially at The Beginning. Time will always function differently for her and for her children, though most of them will not know it.

This is why Death and Sleep are her last sons, when they seem far more necessary than some of their elder siblings. She is not yet ready to shape them from the stars within her. She will wait.

Few of her children stay beneath her robes for long, especially when the Olympians begin their own reign on creation. Hemera leaves her quickly, a daughter she will never truly understand, though they will be compared for all eternity. She does not resent this, understands that Day cannot be contained within Night for long. Aether stays longer, waits until there are other gods who need to breathe, but even he is gone too quickly to forge a true connection.

Others, like Moros or Eris, stay with her until they truly understand themselves. She gives them her wisdom whenever she can, for her children must know how to see beyond what is tangibly present. 

Though they are all of only her and darkness, some of her children are still born in response to outside influence. Ares learns to rage and the Keres leap forth from her supernovas. Atlas holds the earth and Nyx breaths out the beginnings of the Hesperides. Mortals and Immortals alike learn to feel and lie and love and grow, and Apate, Oizys, Philotes, Geras, Nemesis flee from beneath her robes.

Time is different for gods such as Nyx, but she is sole steward of the Underworld, and she knows it will not remain that way for long. Her daughters the Fates slip the passage of time around her, tie and untie a thousand threads, and their brother Charon is born. Like them, he is fully matured the instant his mind is his own, but unlike them he does not immediately leave her. Her son looks at her with eyes consumed by darkness, and Nyx finds herself terribly interested in what he will choose to do in his future. 

Charon waves his hand and makes his boat while still beneath her robes, and she knows it for the gift that it is. She will be aware of her son’s movements if she wishes it. Her darkness will pull his boat along when he wishes it.

And then the threads of Fate untangle and Hades comes to take up half her burden.

It is not long before Persephone arrives, but it is enough time for Nyx to shape the House and then, with care and love and stardust and darkness, to shape her sons.

It has been a long time since Nyx had children who stayed beneath her robes. Her children are necessary, and they know it. They never remain children long.

Perhaps it is Persephone’s presence, so strange and seemingly antithetical to the rest of this place, which keeps these two young. Perhaps it is that they are her last sons, perhaps it is her daughters being kind. No matter the reason, Nyx takes the gift and cherishes it.

Hypnos sleeps beneath her robes, uses the edges as a pillow in a way no other would dare. His curls are permanently sleep-mussed, and his face is always peaceful until the day the Oneiroi come to gaze on their brother and share their power. After that, Hypnos slips between dreams, never his own, and his smooth face develops the lines of nightmares and longing and impossible hallucination. When he wakes, though, it is always with a smile. He takes after Momus in his playfulness, and Nyx loves him.

Thanatos leans into her, using her robes as a shield and a comfort like so few of her children ever have. He watches the world, sometimes with confusion, sometimes with mild interest, and on wonderful occasions, with delight. He is a serious child who will grow into a serious adult, but Nyx learns every tic of self-expression. He will never be able to hide from her, and when she cards her hands through his hair, her love guarantees he will never want to. 

They stay young enough to know Persephone but not remember her well when she leaves. They stay young enough that when Zagreus is born, even Thanatos does not truly understand what his extinguished feet mean. They stay young and even as they explore the House, they tuck themselves back beneath her robes often enough that she has the power to coax Zagreus’s spark into a fire warm enough for life.

She gains a third young son. She suspects that if Persephone had stayed, Nyx would still have called him her child, but she will never really know. 

(When she watched the Queen garden, Philotes visited her and smiled, and Nyx had loved and loved and loved.)

If Persephone had a hand in keeping her sons young, Zagreus has a hand in making them grow. Hypnos and Thanatos are eternally older than Zagreus, but only by a touch. Their maturity will remain nearly the same throughout time, and Nyx delights in watching them grow up together.

Zagreus sets drapes on fire with his restless energy. He plays jokes on shades with Hypnos as his chief companion in mischief. He learns how Thanatos disappears when everything is too much and then how to find him and coax him back out. He is fierce and restless and happy and so full of empathy that Nyx knows he will change everyone he meets.

She loves him, will love him for all of both of their existences, but she knows he may someday go farther than she can reach. She cannot drape her robes around him, but she can cloak him in darkness to keep him safe, and she does. She does, and she meddles with the Olympians and Hades and she encourages her child to _go_ , to do what he must.

And he does.

* * *

  
  
  


Nyx expected that once his quest was complete, she would lose a son.

She did not know if it would be immediate, if his first meeting with his birth mother would carve a distance between them she could not cross. Even if it did not, she imagined there was no way to avoid this loss upon Queen Persephone’s return to the underworld.

As a rule, Nyx does not focus overmuch on loss. The Night is cold and empty and filled with far more than mortal eyes can see, and it does not have space for grief. Nyx tells herself she need not grieve this loss, especially before it has come.

She fails, of course. Of course she fails. How can she not mourn the loss of a son?

And so, when the Queen returns, she tells herself to feel only joy, only relief, and she does feel those things. She does.

But she’s waiting for her relationship with Zagreus to become one-sided, for him to be her son only in her heart.

She does not know what to do when she discovers she was wrong.

“Do you wish for me to stop?” She asks him, and she will, if he wants. She will never call him her child again, outside of her own mind. She will always love him, will always be there, just the same as always, but - 

She cannot take the place of his birth mother. She knows this.

“No.” He says, he smiles. No. No, she will not lose him. “Is it alright that I still call you by your name?”

“It is more than alright, my child.” 

More than he will ever know.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all this game is so fucking good i'm losing my gourd
> 
> also the bit of nyx's kids being beneath her robes is loosely inspired by this one line from ShannaStoryteller's Gods & Monsters and y'all, if you have not read that fic, I am begging you to go do it it's so fucking good
> 
> I take writing requests! Information at: [provisionalpenname on tumblr](https://provisionalpenname.tumblr.com)


End file.
